No holiday for citizen soldiers / Citizen soldiers forgo holidays with family / Guard members feel obligated to serve

Jacquelyn Ambrogio and Robert Paolitti walk through the airport in San Francisco. It's been more than 3 months since sept 11 and the national guard is still out at sfo and 27 other airports in california. We want to talk to some of these guardsmen & women, who signed up to be weekend warriors. Now they have an open ended assignment they never anticipated. the rest of us will be home for christmas; they'll be on guard.Photo By Kurt Rogers less

Jacquelyn Ambrogio and Robert Paolitti walk through the airport in San Francisco. It's been more than 3 months since sept 11 and the national guard is still out at sfo and 27 other airports in california. We ... more

Photo: Kurt Rogers

Photo: Kurt Rogers

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Jacquelyn Ambrogio and Robert Paolitti walk through the airport in San Francisco. It's been more than 3 months since sept 11 and the national guard is still out at sfo and 27 other airports in california. We want to talk to some of these guardsmen & women, who signed up to be weekend warriors. Now they have an open ended assignment they never anticipated. the rest of us will be home for christmas; they'll be on guard.Photo By Kurt Rogers less

Jacquelyn Ambrogio and Robert Paolitti walk through the airport in San Francisco. It's been more than 3 months since sept 11 and the national guard is still out at sfo and 27 other airports in california. We ... more

Photo: Kurt Rogers

No holiday for citizen soldiers / Citizen soldiers forgo holidays with family / Guard members feel obligated to serve

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Who would have thought a year ago that travelers on their way home for Christmas would be hurrying though the airports of America under the gaze of soldiers in battle-dress uniforms armed with M-16 rifles?

Until Sept. 11, nobody thought such a thing was possible -- certainly not the men and women of the California National Guard who are on duty 24-7 at San Francisco International, Oakland, San Jose and 27 other airports. "I never ever thought we'd be doing this," said Timothy Appel, who in civilian life delivers mail in Seaside, near Monterey.

Appel, who is 27 and has a wife back home, is a citizen soldier who spent four years in the regular Army, couldn't get it out of his system and joined the National Guard. One weekend a month, he traded his civilian gray Postal Service uniform for a green one to be a parachute rigger with the 128th Quartermaster Company, which drills in Santa Barbara. His rank was specialist with the pay grade of E-4. He was a weekend warrior.

The other National Guard soldiers called up for airport duty are just like him: There are truck drivers, teachers, university graduate students, electrical workers. Specialist Manuel Velez was an emergency department clerk at Stanford Hospital. First Lt. Robert Paeoletti was a Stockton cop. Specialist Robert Ferroggiaro was a correctional officer on Death Row at San Quentin.

Then came that day in September when their world changed. More than 1,200 California guard personnel were called up, and more than a thousand were assigned to airport duty. "I'm Army, sir," Velez said. "We're all Army."

ON THE JOB SINCE OCTOBER

The troops have been on the job since mid-October, and they will be there until some new security system goes into effect.

This means they'll be on duty Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, and for months to come.

Everyone who has gone through an airport has seen them: They are stationed at the security gates, watching civilian personnel screen carry-on baggage. They are also posted outside airport buildings to check on trucks and inside what the airport calls "the sterile area" where every person has gone though security.

They are "another set of eyes to ensure those check points are being run in a proper manner," said Sgt. 1st Class Tom Jacobs, a guard spokesman. The soldiers work for the Federal Aviation Administration and local law enforcement. Another task, Jacobs said, "is to provide an armed presence to help enhance confidence in the safety of America's air travel system."

The National Guard is also on the Bay Area's big bridges. Anyone who has ever been in the military knows very well what the troops are doing -- it's guard duty. Alexander the Great posted guards after he conquered Balkh, in northern Afghanistan. Balkh is one of the oldest cities in the world, and guard duty is the oldest job in the army.

Until this fall, armed troops in the airport were something passengers saw in other countries: in British airports concerned about Irish Republican Army terrorists, in Israel, or in dictatorships. Sometimes it's a shock to see them at SFO along with people wearing Santa hats. It's not your Norman Rockwell holiday scene.

MOST PASSENGERS FRIENDLY

Guardsmen say most passengers are friendly, say hello or thank them for being there, or have their pictures taken next to a soldier. Not all. Some passengers are late for planes and hate the security. Some are rude. Some are in a foul temper. "One guy came up to me and said all the security checkpoints reminded him of Communist Russia," Ferroggiaro said.

There used to be a sentimental aura about the military during the holiday season: Bob Hope's Christmas shows for the troops overseas, Bing Crosby dreaming of a white Christmas with his old Army buddies, the airports full of uniformed soldiers, sailors and Marines on Christmas leave. In wartimes past, every family had someone in the military or knew a service member.

But now talking to soldiers is almost like entering another world: They are disciplined, for one thing. They do what they are told. Men wear their hair short; the women have theirs piled up under their caps. At the airport, the camouflage uniforms make soldiers look like zebras out of their habitat.

There is a sort of wistfulness about these citizen soldiers, who have one foot in civilian life and another in the Army. They all say they don't mind being on duty, even at Christmas.

"A soldier is a different kind of life," Velez said. "I love being a soldier."

These are holidays when the pull of family is strong. "It's hard to convey, " said Staff Sgt. Jac (for Jacques) London. "For many, it's hard to be separated from your family. But still, we've got a duty to do."

In the modern military, most of the troops are married. This year, this means the spouse does the Christmas shopping, goes to the holiday parties alone, sends the cards -- and explains to the kids where the other parent is.

"I have three children," Paeoletti said, "and all but the 3-year-old understand. He wants to know where Daddy is."

On Christmas, Paeoletti's family will be home in Stockton. He'll be at the airport. Nearly everybody else in the detail will be there, too.

PROUD TO BE A SOLDIER

Why do they do this? There are a dozen reasons. Velez says he is a fourth- generation soldier; it's in his genes. Staff Sgt. Jacklyn Ambrogio, who was working on a master's degree at San Jose State when she was called up, said she wanted to be a soldier since she was in the fourth grade in South San Francisco.

"A lot of people -- adults -- said, 'Why would a little girl want to join the Army?' " She joined the regular Army at 17, stayed awhile, joined the reserves and the National Guard, and is now, at the age of 29, thinking about the regular Army again.

Why? "Adventure," she said. "To get away." She learned how to rappel down sheer walls and how to counsel soldiers with drug and alcohol problems, served in Oklahoma and Korea, and has seen the world.

They say that the Guard soldiers are all volunteers, and they understand they can be called up anytime, to go anywhere, do anything. At least that's the theory.

"We had more volunteers for this duty than we needed," Paeoletti said. "It's a national emergency."

"How long will we do this?" Appel said. "Until they ask us to stop. As long as it takes."